That sulfurous smell hovering over the Capitol should abate in a day or two now that the legislative session from hell has folded.

Not entirely, of course, because of those who reside there year-round. But what an utterly dissatisfying failure of a session it was.

It was dismal for the governor, the Legislature, a promised progressive agenda that turned to compost — and especially for the people, who expected the Legislature not to leave town without expressing, through action, some sense of heightened accountability for that parade of corruption and scandal the feds recently brought to our repeated attention.

Exactly what could, or should, have been done raises all sorts of questions.

But we should be hearing those expressed publicly in debate. Maybe it is primarily a matter of letting the federal prosecutor from the Southern District cull the herd, as he is doing, with promises of more to come.

Perhaps letting legislators tell us what standards they expect of themselves and their colleagues would help to elevate their lowest-of-the-low reputation.

They're terrible at public relations, and for a public body that is not a small thing.

Walking away without a word as they just did conveys the inescapable conclusion that they're OK with business as usual.

Well, it isn't OK. New York is being humiliated.

The governor says he'll convene a Moreland Commission this week to look into campaign finance and maybe legislative corruption. He is clearly reluctant to do so, because the threat of convening the investigative body offers more leverage and fewer tactical problems.

As former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky pointed out, a Moreland Commission cannot investigate the Legislature, not without a partner with jurisdiction, notably the attorney general. But that would mean the governor giving up control of an investigation that could go who knows where as a result. Looking into the darker corners of financing elections, and contributions, is another area that offers risks for a governor with around $20 million in his re-election war chest.

•

Giving up control for this governor has as much appeal as having his fingernails pulled.

But the polls are clear, and Cuomo puts great credence in the polls. The one issue the public expected from the Legislature is taking on the persistent corruption in which some of their members seem to wallow, while repeatedly getting caught.

That hasn't happened, so I'm not sure the governor has a choice but to name the commission. Not that he won't maneuver to control it.

Cuomo has come a long way in six months, and it's all downhill.

In early December, the day after the creation of the Independent Democratic Caucus in the Senate, he issued a 10-point litmus test for success for the coming legislative session, and the effectiveness of the new ruling coalition in the Senate.

That was when he was riding high, with a 72 percent favorability rating as a person, and a similar approval rating for how he was governing. There was also a sense that he had the personal power to get nearly anything passed that he wanted.

That was then.

Now he's down to a 58 percent favorability rating and, more critically, a job performance rating that is roughly 50-50. And it's still trending south. His decline has been steady in the polls since the colossal arrogance of ramming through enhanced, unneeded gun control legislation in January.

•

But back to the litmus test. A true litmus test is yea or nay, but a metaphoric one such as the governor issued during his high hubris days is far more subject to massage. But either way, it's hard for the governor to see anything but disappointing failure in the results, and in the IDC's performance as well.

The high points were passing minimum wage increases over three years, which virtually everyone in the state supported, and passing a timely budget that kept spending under his tax cap and preserved tax cuts.

But campaign finance reform failed utterly because it is anathema to Senate Republicans who represent the special interests seeking the most effective access money can buy.

In a real sense, the failure of campaign finance reform is the predictable price we all paid for artificially propping up the Republicans in the Senate in a ditsy ruling coalition. There's a very strong suspicion Cuomo operatives working behind the scenes helped craft the coalition that kept the Senate Democrats from being the majority.

Given the power to be obstructionists, the Republicans exercised it. No surprise there.

The failure of passing in the 11th hour the abortion plank of Cuomo's 10-part Women's Equality Act is solely on the governor's head. He's the one who pushed it from the beginning, raised expectations, but could not deliver.

This is proof that he does not have the raw power he did six months ago. That, and the fact that the Republicans will not soon forget the last time they got schmoozed by the governor into a ''conscience'' vote, over same-sex marriage.